The temptation of loneliness can haunt priests alone at their parishes, but a variety of priestly fraternities are giving them ways of finding community with brother priests to sustain them.

WASHINGTON — Parish ministry in the 21st century sees most U.S. diocesan priests living alone, working all day to care for the needs of their flock. But stalking many diocesan priests by day, and prowling in the pouring dark of the parish residence by night, is the enemy they call loneliness.

It’s a desperate battle that some priests and bishops are trying to solve.

“You can use the rope to swing by it, or you can hang by it,” Father Brian Carpenter said of the challenge of living alone in an assignment. The priest of the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., is by nature a “raging extrovert,” and he said adjusting to his assignment in rural Owego was “very difficult” for the first three months. Both he and the pastor, Father William Moorby, have to minister to the clustered Blessed Trinity and St. Patrick parishes at four worship sites that cover a large swath of territory. This leaves them each living alone in separate rectories close to five days out of the week.

In the Diocese of Jefferson City, Mo., Father Nicholas Reid has a similar challenge as the pastor of a rural community of 400 Catholics in Freeburg. He has just close to three years of ordained priesthood under his belt, and he said his rural parish is a “wonderful place” to undergo his first pastoral assignment, but “it can be tough.”

Living alone at a parish is an experience that seminary talks about, but seminarians live in community and only come to know what the experience is like firsthand as priests. Some priests end up as casualties of isolation: where the temptations of loneliness can lead to addiction, burnout or seeking intimacy in all the wrong places.

“The danger is that a guy can get caught in a depressed state and not know where to turn to help,” Father Carpenter said.

Dioceses appear to have uneven approaches to dealing with the challenge of loneliness for priests. Father Reid said his diocese incorporated discussions on loneliness and living alone in its five-year continuing-education program for priests; when asked, Father Carpenter could not recall the topic ever being discussed in his diocese’s one-year continuing-education program.

Prioritizing Priestly Fraternity

Both priests have a deep love for their ministries, but said the key to living out a healthy, integrated priesthood means engaging in priestly fraternity, developing a strong prayer life and integrating themselves into the life of their communities. They also take a day out of each month to meet with their spiritual director, who can help identify spiritual dangers or potential unhealthy behaviors or areas. The sacrament of reconciliation is also frequently received.

The key to these isolated priests’ battle is maintaining relationships with fellow priests. Both Father Carpenter and Father Reid said that belonging to priest support groups, such as Jesu Caritas,are essential, in their experience.

In these groups, they meet once a month with fellow priests to spend a Holy Hour in prayer, share a common meal and catch up. It has become a staple in both of their lives. When Father Carpenter cannot make the two-hour drive to meetings, he uses Skype video chat to be present.

“Priests who live alone still need their brother priests,” he said. “They may not live with others in the same home, but they need the fraternal support only provided by one's peers and colleagues.”

He explained the temptation of loneliness manifests itself in priests in a number of ways. One is burnout from neglecting their health and spiritual life, leaving them vulnerable to various addictions and temptations. Another is the “virgin martyr” syndrome, where the priest gets caught up in a “romantic dream” of neglecting his own needs to tend for his flock. The reality, he said, is that this kind of priest develops into an “odd, eccentric or just weird” man, because he “no longer has healthy interaction with brother priests and with well-rounded members of the laity.”

A related danger is self-ostracization or “Lone Ranger syndrome,” when a solitary priest feels alienated and embittered from diocesan politics and withdraws further from his bishop and brother priests.

Father Trigilio said that “ongoing formation” in all four pillars of a priest’s clerical formation — spiritual, theological, pastoral and human — “are essential to healthy, well-balanced clergy.”

And the Bible’s injunction that “it is not good for man to be alone” applies to priests, as well as the laity.

“Jesus sent his disciples out, two-by-two, not one-by-one,” said Father Trigilio. “When priests live alone, they need to pursue some fraternity to maintain their balance.”

Oratory: An Urban Opportunity

However, others are responding to the Second Vatican Council’s call for diocesan priests to live a “common life or some sharing of common life” and voluntarily follow the evangelical counsels — a tradition reaching back to St. Augustine in the fourth century.

Father Joseph Illo, chaplain of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., said that loneliness extends beyond rural outliers. Priests in some of the most populated urban centers in the nation are also living alone.

“The reason priests don’t live together is because they don’t think they can,” he said. “They don’t think they would get along, and they don’t have a structure they think they could submit to.”

Father Illo is working with San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to establish a community of diocesan priests in a “society of apostolic life” known as an oratory, where they will live together under a common roof, with a superior and have a rule of life that includes common prayer, meals and activities for priests as they go out and perform their tasks in the diocese. So far, there are eight established oratories in the United States.

“We’re taking a proven structure of the Church for parish priests to live together, and we’re submitting ourselves to a rule with fraternal charity and common prayer,” he said.

The oratory priests will be incardinated into the Oratory of St. Phillip Neri in Rome and are ultimately answerable to the Pope. But they remain diocesan priests doing diocesan work and are accountable to the local ordinary. Father Illo said the oratory will not start in San Francisco until August, but he is already received inquiries from priests and seminaries all over the country.

But a hybrid form of oratory, where priests live together in fraternity, but under the authority of the diocese itself, is also taking root in the U.S. The Companions of Christ in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis have 20 diocesan priests who live for the most part in households, close to their parish assignments and under a superior. They are a “public association of diocesan clerics,” answerable to their bishop, living out the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.

“I think it is a healthy way to live,” said Father Jon VanderPloeg, superior of the Companions of Christ.

He explained that Companions has its roots in a group of young men, who felt they had to choose between living in community or diocesan priesthood until they were shown this way of life. They are getting ready to ordain two new priests this year, and a similar group has already started in the Archdiocese of Denver.

The Companions’ life is very different than just “living together,” and the rule helps the priests enter into “relationship with one another, sharing life deeply,” their superior explained. It is a fraternity of deep relationships, where the priests “can really walk with each other and help each other and go deep into what the Lord’s asking.”

Said Father VanderPloeg, “Even to have someone else who knows your weakness, but is walking with you, is such a strength.”

Comments

Invite your parish Priest to dinner at your home every 3 months or so.
If enough people do this, his social calendar will be quite full.
.
1 Cor 7:32-34
” I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.
And the unmarried woman or girlis anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband.”

Posted by grace Kim on Monday, Apr 7, 2014 2:05 PM (EDT):

@Fr.Trigilio, honored by you joining our fickle debating! Question? We hear priests saying “day off, vacation, my job”.
I don’t know what to think about it. the process of formation for priesthood is permitted this concept? we don’t want our priest dying at the altar with too much burn out. Yet we rather see that our priest take their holy vocation not as the modern business work!

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Apr 7, 2014 12:20 AM (EDT):

Just wanted to say “pouring dark of loneliness” is a nice turn of phrase.

There comes a time, or rather a point of time when as a Priest or Religious one loses the call from the Lord, all because the Lord’s call is not cherished and actively loved and promoted to intimacy with the Lord. Here one will have nothing by way of what the Lord did for him/her. Such people end up doing only the duties of the institution and enjoying it’s privileges and thus living a life of a sort.

If you look behind such peoples’ curtains and smoke screens or iron walls you will not be edified. So it is not so wise to go too close to some people who have perhaps a different Christ to cherish, worship and serve. Observe the contents of their words,talks and communications during the day and see who is getting the priority there. And also the amount time spent of different categories of activities. It speaks and reveals whether we have a lost soul here or not.

@ grace : Some Priests (may be more among secular Priests) and religious have a serious problem of their own make : Starting in the Spirit and ending in the FLESH. But then there are others Starting and ending in the FLESH. Here life of following Jesus or consecration is a source of worldly security in every sense. Those who are not Truthful with themselves how do they end up?

Posted by geraldine clark on Sunday, Apr 6, 2014 1:34 AM (EDT):

What about rotating fun dinners with reps from the different cultural groups within the parish,(if large) or with family groups, (if small), such as supper once or twice a week for the priest. Or an activity such as a ball game or golf.
Parish business, counselling, confessions, and of course gossiping off limits.

Posted by Father John Trigilio on Saturday, Apr 5, 2014 11:18 PM (EDT):

I respect the valid difference between priests who live in community (religious order clergy) and those who live alone in a rectory (diocesan secular clergy). After 26 years of diocesan priesthood, half of which was spent living with another priest as a parochial vicar and half living alone as a pastor, I can tell you unequivocally, ALL priests NEED other priests. FRATERNITY is not exclusively defined as cohabitating under the same roof. Fraternity is not WHERE you live or WITH WHOM you live, it is about HOW you live. Most diocesan priests live ALONE but they are not solitary priests. Holy Orders makes us brothers. Yes, CHRONOLOGICALLY I spend more time alone and with my parishioners. Nevertheless, I MAKE time every week and once a month and annually to spend QUALITY time with my brother priests and deacons (via the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy). Holy Mother Church in her infinite wisdom EXHORTS secular clergy to foster sacerdotal FRATERNITY. Not that we all have to live in the same residence together, but that we have FRIENDS in the priesthood. Priestly friends communicate with each other and they spend some time together. Priests who never or rarely spend time with other priests can and often get into trouble or are in need of help. Diocesan (parish) priests are NOT hermits. We need good lay friends and we need good clergy friends. Even in His Sacred humanity, Jesus spent quality time with Lazarus, Martha and Mary AND He spent quality time with Peter, James and John. He spent time with the other nine of the Twelve Apostles and He spent time in solitary prayer. Friendships are essential but fraternity transcends even that. There is a special bond shared with those with whom we are bound in sacerdotal fraternity. Brother priests are united by Holy Orders. We are family, even if we do not live in the same domicile. Priestly fraternities can be under the same roof but they do not have to do so. They can be bound not by geography but by ontology. Oratories and other communities where priests literally live together are important to the church but so are individual diocesan priests who live alone. Fraternity does not mean I have to have house-mates but it does mean I need the prayers and support of my brother clergy.

Posted by grace Kim on Saturday, Apr 5, 2014 6:22 PM (EDT):

I have a very mixed feeling about this subject. yes, we human being all get into loneness. I think Jesus in humanity was exceedilgly lonely too. I personally coming from different country more than a quarter centry ago, received as a forever stranger. Plus, at the native country, felt like not belong to there. Beside the personal experience, when we see our life in a Spirtual perspective, we are all loners. It’s ok, admitt it! We still can be constructive and positive. I personally hear many priests crying for the loneness. I dare to say that our true soul mate is God! Period! We came from his heart. Until we settle in him here on earth or Heaven, no human can fill our heart completely. So, I pray our priests figure out that they belong to the Divine business. If they have a spare time to be lonely, charish it with a spirtual works! I dare remind them look at our Early church fathers! They were loners! Sorry, if my expectation is too high!

“I live in a remote area and can clearly see the isolation our priest suffers. Families are not inviting them into their regular family lives as they should.”

Could it be because they are not inspiring or exemplary enough? Money minded and ritualistic, rude and uncaring or even….body snatchers? or any other reason? Let the people speak and let the TRUTH come out.

It is Jesus the Lord who said, ” Come to know the TRUTH and the TRUTH will make you FREE”.

Good Priests will always be wanted and are welcome everywhere for they are JESUS centered and lovers of his people.

“I have two sons who have the hopes of being priests. But when the Diocese sent them letters my sons said No to the Diocesan Priesthood.”

Do we need two kinds of Priesthoods in the Church of the Lord?

Let us chose in the light of Jesus’ own original group. They were not even SECULAR.

The INSTITUTIONALIZATION of the Church of the Lord by false Apostles brought in all kinds of evils.

Posted by Corey Rouse on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 10:11 PM (EDT):

The Oratory is a vocation and not a solution.

“Priests who live alone still need their brother priests.”
-Not so. This makes you wonder if these people have ever experienced a typical presbyterate. These are not human beings that you would want co-habiting with you.

Priestly “fraternities” must always remain an option and not be imposed, nor be preached as if the rest of the diocesan clergy that prefer to live alone are anti-social, or fatalistically bound to get in trouble if they live alone.

[comment edited]

Posted by Maura on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 9:05 PM (EDT):

Pray for our spiritual fathers, laity! Invite them into our homes to bless them both with holy water and prayers uttered from ordained voices, as well as their presence. Share with them the fruits of their prayer and sacrifice! Make sacrifices for them! They are someone’s son! Would you not want the same for your son?

Posted by Father John Trigilio on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 6:49 PM (EDT):

Vatican II (Presbyterorum Ordinis), Pope John Paul II (Pastores Dabo Vobis), Canon Law and the Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests, all magisterial documents, make it clear that priestly fraternity is not an option, it is a necessity. No one is saying diocesan (secular) clergy MUST live in community, however, fostering priestly fraternity helps the priest himself, his brother priests and ultimately his parishioners. Fraternity is more than merely socializing and recreating with other priests. It is PRAYING together, even if just once a month; STUDYING (church documents) and discussing them together; SUPPORTING one another. As deacons share in the clerical state, the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (http://www.catholic-clergy.org) comprises both priests and deacons, in members and on the board of directors. FRATERNITY need not be limited to collegiate alcoholics. The concept of FRATERNITAS is rooted in brotherly love and Holy Orders binds men together as ordained brethren just as Jesus did with the Apostles and Disciples.

Posted by Brian on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 5:24 PM (EDT):

Six to Eight years of preparation to become a priest, one would think a man would have an understanding of what the vocation entailed. Being alone during some of those years of priesthood, would seem to fit into the religious life. I agree with Alzheimer, the article is touchy-feeley, and implies a priest is more isolated, because he is a priest. What a bad impression to leave on a young man considering entering the priesthood. I look to the priest as being a man of God, a steward of the faith, the one who will help me obtain a proper life with God. A man who is more concerned about the condition of his flock, rather than, if he has a buddy to discuss his day with.

Posted by May on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 5:08 PM (EDT):

I have lived in a far flung parish for thirty years in the very majority Protestant South where the single priest we have lives thirty minutes from the next parish pries. I find that the people of the parish are family and Father is very much part of our family.
Having grown up in a predominantly Catholic part of the country where there were seven parishes in a small geographic area (7 by 21 miles), and where there were two priests per parish, the priests did not mix with the laity much at all except to administer the Sacraments.
Personally I like the priest being part of our lives in more than just administering the Sacraments. We truly are family here.
But we did have one priest with a very withdrawn personality that belongs more to a monastery as he avoided contact with the parishioners except during administering the sacraments. He just was happier as a loner it seemed.
I see no need for a priest to be lonely or alone in any event, unless he chooses it as did that priest of ours. BTW, it was very painful for our parish to have such a stand-offish, unfriendly and cold priest. He just didn’t seem to have the pastor gene. He needed to be in, as I said, a monastery.

Posted by Kathy on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 2:49 PM (EDT):

I live in a remote area and can clearly see the isolation our priest suffers. Families are not inviting them into their regular family lives as they should. We should all be making more of an effort to include our Priest into our community life. I’m sure this would really help and build a strong church.

Posted by mother2eight on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 2:18 PM (EDT):

I think the article is spot on. I have two sons who have the hopes of being priests. But when the Diocese sent them letters my sons said No to the Diocesan Priesthood. The were looking into orders because of the brotherhood the Franciscans and other orders had. Their Pastor has been falsely accused of abuse and while he sits out to clear his name not one of his Diocesan brother Priests has contacted him. I know the orders aren’t perfect but there is some kind of family or brotherhood among them; that as a Mom I would hope my son would have.

Posted by Father John Trigilio on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 2:00 PM (EDT):

Bishops, Vicars for Clergy, Seminary Rectors & Faculty, Vocation Directors: please URGE young newly ordained as well as the seasoned veterans to seriously pursue priestly fraternity as part of their spiritual life.

This is a very good trend, I think. In the Eastern churches, the tradition is either married priests or monks living in a monastic community, in an attempt to avoid this problem. May God bless the effort!

Posted by DeCarlo on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 12:20 PM (EDT):

I don’t know about the rural areas, but in the urban areas, churches are usually close to one another. Priests could live together in one rectory. They would have to learn to live with each other.

Posted by Sam Alzheimer on Friday, Apr 4, 2014 11:21 AM (EDT):

This article lays it on too thick. Sure, priests experience loneliness, but it is not a pervasive problem that affects most priests. This article is damaging in that it perpetuates the “loneliness myth,” which further scares young men from seriously considering the priesthood.

Consider how Fr. Brett Brannen addresses this misunderstanding in his forthcoming book, “A Priest in the Family,” written for the parents of would-be priests:

“Interestingly, married and single people who come to me for spiritual direction describe loneliness as an issue far more often than priests and religious sisters. Most priests I know do not consider loneliness to be a great problem in their lives, because they are with people who love them so much of the time. Living celibately as a priest does not mean that a priest has no intimacy in his life. On the contrary, most priests would say that they feel the love and support of so many people that it can be humbling and even overwhelming.

“If you are worried that your son will be lonely, or not happy and fulfilled, I recommend that you talk with your own parish priest, or with the parents of priests in your diocese. They will reassure you that priests, by and large, are very satisfied in their vocation. I know many priests. And I would say that I know twenty happy priests for every one priest who says he is unhappy or lonely.”

Most priests have a natural fraternity with brother priests. And most have healthy friendships with lay people.
That said, formalized priest fraternities are very healthy and good, but they are not absolutely essential for a priest to be happy and secure in his vocation.

Join the Discussion

We encourage a lively and honest discussion of our content. We ask that charity guide your words.
By submitting this form, you are agreeing to our discussion guidelines.
Comments are published at our discretion. We won’t publish comments that lack charity, are off topic, or are more than 400 words.
Thank you for keeping this forum thoughtful and respectful.